Stone and raffle prize for the War Memorial.

20 September, 2019 – 8:49 am

After a successful trip to the quarry, I have chosen this piece.

As you can see from the first photo there were plenty of pieces to choose from but they needed to fit the right criteria.

8ft x 4ft to start off with, no visible flaws, interesting colours and of course good surfaces to carve into.

The second photo shows the surface that I will be carving the First World War names and soldier into, it has a uneven and slightly rough natural face and although this makes it more difficult to carve, to me, it symbolises the harshness of the First World War.

The next photo hopefully gives you some idea of the natural colour in the stone.

The third photo shows the other side, it was much more uneven and as the stone needed to be cut to the right thickness this was the side that was cut off.

This cut surface hopefully is a good representation for the Second World War, there are saw marks and scuffs where the stone has been cut to size and moved around. I hope that this symbolises the more mechanised and slightly more modern warfare of the Second World War. 

This last picture is a carving that I have done in a piece of Mitcheldean sandstone. I have tried to carve a good representation of the Royal Gloster’s Regimental Back Badge.

The badge is 5.5inches diameter and the piece of stone is 12 x 8.5 inches at it’s widest point.

We were unable to use the Wilderness Quarry in Mitcheldean as it was mothballed about 9 yrs ago. Thankfully I had a piece left from my stock that I bought years ago when I used to use to use this quarry. The piece of sandstone is quite coarse and very hard so getting precise detail was very difficult, I hope you like what I have done.

The raffle tickets are £1 each and will be available to buy from me at my studio. You can see the carving here until the 5th of October and then it will be winging it’s way to Mitcheldean.
There will be other prizes on offer, if you think you would like to donate a prize, please get in touch using the Clerk’s contact details below.

The draw will take place on the 19th October at the Curry and Blues fundraising event in Mitcheldean. Tickets for this are £12.50.
There will be a local brewery selling their beer, great food and music. For more details or to purchase a ticket please get in touch with the town clerk; clerk@mitcheldeancouncil.co.uk or call 01594 544723.

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  1. 2 Responses to “Stone and raffle prize for the War Memorial.”

  2. Hi Caroline,
    thanks for the pics and the reasoning behind the choice of stone, really interesting. Is this piece sandstone or quartzite?

    By Graeme on Sep 23, 2019

  3. Hi Graeme, thank you for leaving a comment. The stone is Forest of Den Sandstone from the Barnhill quarry nr Coleford. It is my favourite local sandstone to carve lettering in, this was why I chose this particular quarry.

    By Caroline Horwood on Sep 24, 2019

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